Inextinguishable
by Niamh St. George
Summary: His future stretches out like the brightest beacon: bodyguard to a magister. It is more than he ever believed himself possible of being; he will be a bodyguard, a protector to his master. It will mean a better life—a better life for him, a better life for his mother and sister. Leto knows, knows it in his gut—this will make him so much more than he'd ever been before.


Written July 2013 for the Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang, published originally on AO3.

#

_Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly toward you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care: I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth._

_—Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (1831)_

_It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood._

_—Macbeth, .121_

#

Blood. There is blood slicking the length of his blade. Blood sliding in rivulets down steel and dripping like so many dark gems onto the hot sand, now slowly dotted with raindrops. He has won.

Leto looks down, down at the glistening beads, so stark and dark and _red_ against the yellow sand. Yes, some of the blood is his; he is not without injury, but he will heal, skin pulling together and roughening into yet another scar. There is no shame in scars.

The wind shifts, turning the oppressively hot day cooler. A gentle wind tickles his skin beneath the sweat, along the back of his neck and his sunburnt shoulders as thunder rumbles above and to the east, a warning too distant to heed just yet. Heat still pushes up from the ground, stubborn and defiant and insistent, but the rains are coming. The rains are coming and _Leto has won_, and that eases the ache in his back, eases the sting of sunburn across his brow and down his arms. He is victorious, and the arena erupts in noise—deafening cheers from those whose bets yielded them gold drown out hisses and boos from those going home with pockets a little lighter. None of this matters to Leto. _He is the victor._ Even as rain begins its soft patter, hesitant droplets mingling with blood, challenging the baked sand beneath his feet, his future stretches out like the brightest beacon: bodyguard to a magister. It is more than he ever believed himself possible of being; he is no mere house slave, left to toil in the kitchen or sweat under backbreaking work on the grounds. He will be a _bodyguard, _a protector to his master permitted to leave the estate. It will mean a better life—a better life for him, a better life for his mother and sister.

Leto _knows_, knows it in his gut—this will make him so much more than he'd ever been before. Closing his eyes, he tips his head back, acknowledging the cheers and savoring the cool droplets of rain as they caress his overheated skin.

His opponent's blood pools at his feet. He has _won._

#

The stones are slick with it, black puddles that shine silver in the moonlight, steaming slightly in the autumn chill. Thick droplets fall from his gauntlets like saliva from a wolf's fangs.

Danarius' hunters are dead.

The woman who had Anso so absurdly nervous stands at the bottom of a short flight of stairs; she is as blood-spattered as he, the bladed weapon upon her back slick with it, and if she is put off by his method of… dealing with his former master's captain, there is no sign of it upon her face. Surprise and wariness at his sudden appearance, which is understandable. But not disgust. Not fear. Fenris doubts not for a second she is observant, _capable_; she watches and listens and questions, never hesitating to let him know she did not appreciate his subterfuge.

The chest. He must ask about the chest, must know its contents and whether—

_Empty._ The chest is empty. Of course it is.

He apologizes, but more because he still requires her assistance; every one of the dead hunters bear Danarius' mark upon their armor. Danarius is nearby and the chest he'd used to draw Fenris out is _empty_.

#

The room is empty, which only accentuates how very vast it is, how richly furnished.

Leto has never—never in all his eighteen years—been in a room as lush as this. The ivory marble floor is polished to a high sheen, threads of red, so many different shades of it running through the pale rock like blood through so many veins. Lavish tapestries and deeply-colored wall-hangings cover every surface; they appear _old_ for all they are still fine, depicting scenes of battles, of animals Leto has never seen or dreamt of before, their threads fairly gleaming in the room's gentle lamplight. Heavy drapes are pushed back from windows spanning floor to ceiling, revealing the storm-soaked grounds beyond the glass. The hour is not late, but the clouds are so dense, and rain pouring down so thick, late afternoon might as well be night.

Inside, countless lamps cast flickering light onto the room and its furnishings, turning everything deeply golden. Soft couches—he wonders if they are velvet; he has heard of the fabric but never felt it himself—with plump cushions and chairs covered in soft, shining fabrics surround the room, all facing the center. Above him, a domed glass ceiling reveals the dense, dark clouds, churning as torrents of rain course down, streaming against the glass. Lightning flashes moments before thunder booms, the glass lamps rattling and clinking softly with the noise.

The room's centerpiece is a table, heavily constructed of dark red wood and polished to a shine. Four thick leather straps with heavy silver buckles dangle from it, the metal glinting maliciously in the low light. Leto then realizes the spotless floor slopes inward on all sides. There is a hole, just beneath the table. A hole with a grate over it.

A drain.

It does not take him long to imagine what such a drain might be for, beneath a table such as that one.

"Master?" he breathes, hoping he will not be beaten for his insolence, for speaking out of turn like this.

"Don't tell me you're getting cold feet _now,_ lad," Danarius replies on a chuckle. "You've not even received your… reward."

The way Danarius lingers on that particular word—_reward_—causes a tiny frisson of uncertainty, the first he's felt since deciding to enter the contest, unfurl in his belly. But he knows better than to question, and so when the magister instructs him to strip down to his skin, Leto obeys, his eyes never leaving the marble floor, its threads of color now looking like nothing so much as stretches of dried blood.

One does not question a magister.

#

"What manner of mage are you?"

Fury, frustration, and some close kin to betrayal swell in his chest. He should have seen. He should have _known._ He has been too exposed to magic-wielders over the years; there is no excuse for such a lapse as _this._

The strange long-handled, bladed weapon upon her back is a _staff_. This _Hawke_ is a mage. So angry is he at this revelation he forgets the streaks of dried, dark blood upon that blade came from hunters and slavers she killed without hesitation or compunction.

Part of him wants to blame Anso, but that in itself is fruitless. Even if the dwarf had been able to tell such a thing about Hawke, the man was so nervous about being aboveground, he doubtless would have missed such a detail.

Hawke looks for a moment like she's about to make a flippant remark; he can read it in the curve of her lips, in the arch of her brow, and it only serves to rankle him further. But then her mirth fades into thoughtfulness as she admits, "I'm… just trying to get by."

Fenris understands such a sentiment, and it grates upon him they have that in common. He has indeed seen many crimes committed in the name of survival. What he does not tell her is it is _he_ who has committed them. One lies in the name of survival. One steals coin in the name of survival. One slits throats in the name of survival. It is a slippery slope, one Fenris has not always navigated easily or successfully. The blood still slicking his own spiked, clawed fingers _drip, drip, drips _in the darkness, its soft tattoo both a reminder and testament to such a slope.

But he reminds himself she is honest with him when she could have lied. She aided him—against, if not a magister, then the threat of one—when she could have walked away. It is with reluctance Hawke takes his coin—the coin owed her for a job done proficiently—and then only after Fenris presses the softly clinking bag into her hands. She _will_ take his money; he does not accept charity_._

But then it is _she_ who requests his help.

And he agrees to give it.

#

There is no help for him.

It is a cold, lonely thought that creeps through the cracks in Leto's fear, one that wraps as tightly around him as the leather straps that hold him fast to the table. The sky above is dark now and the rain pounds relentlessly against the glass. The world is dark, but for blinding flashes of lightning cutting jagged arcs across the sky, lighting the depths of the clouds and lasting only seconds before plunging back into wet blackness. His heart pounds faster and harder against his ribs as Danarius' apprentice, a dark-haired woman with ice-blue eyes and narrow features works a length of thick, rolled leather between his teeth. Flashing a smile, she pats his cheek with too much force for it to be affectionate.

"Don't want you biting off that pretty tongue of yours, do we? Not before we can find out what it does."

"Hadriana," Danarius drawls, an infinite number of warnings loaded in that one word. He says nothing more. He doesn't have to. She subsides, and if Danarius notes her petulance, he doesn't remark on it.

But her words have already hit their mark; his blood runs cold and sweat chills his skin. A drop of perspiration slides down his neck, another down the curve of his tailbone. He has never been so _exposed_ as this, naked but for the sweat and the talisman of twisted metal shaped into Elgar'nan's symbol, suspended by a thin strip of leather—a gift from his mother, one of the few things she'd kept from her childhood before she was stolen away from her clan. Its weight resting against the hollow of his throat is a touchstone, is a reminder of why he's here at all. It is his own childhood, sitting upon his mother's knee, his narrow fingertip tracing the symbol while his mother told him stories of the Creators, of Fen'Harel, of aravels and toys carved from halla horns. They were only stories, they would only ever _be_ stories, but those tales, the talisman upon his skin, those things _are_ his mother. His mother and Varania, who will—no matter how afraid he is right now, they _will_ have a better life. A _free_ life. He will undergo anything for that.

A panel of heavy, dark wood slides open noiselessly, and _someone_ walks in, but Leto, for all his straining and craning his neck, cannot see the newcomer. He only sees Danarius and Hadriana's reaction to the arrival. Hadriana smirks, draping herself across a thickly upholstered divan, while Danarius claps his hands together once and smiles.

His new master's smile is a terrifying one.

#

Hawke is smiling at him. More to the point, he has _made_ her smile. It is a crooked thing, all amusement and unspoken jests that reaches and warms her eyes.

She visits often, and though he frequently questions her reasons for wishing to spend time in a dilapidated, abandoned mansion, floors and windows and furniture broken and ruined, she only smiles _that_ smile at him and shrugs, insisting his abode is still an improvement over her uncle's home in Lowtown. This night she has come bearing a small purse hanging heavy with coin. She sets it down with a soft _clink_ as she sits on the bench situated in front of the hearth, gratefully accepting the glass of wine he offers her. In the shadows of his chamber, it is every bit as red as blood. In the light of the fire, it glows like rubies. Hawke takes a drink, and though she savors the taste, her smile turns… troubled.

"Hawke?"

"That's everything," she tells him abruptly, fingering the leather pouch. "Fifty gold pieces. We've done it. Now it's… just a matter of giving the money to Bartrand and _hoping_ this expedition pays as well as Varric seems to think it will."

It's then he hears it: the note of doubt in her voice.

"You think it may not pay."

"I'm _afraid_ it may not pay. Completely different." She lets out a long sigh and swings her leg around so she's sitting astride the bench, bracing her arms behind her, looking over at him again. Smiling again. "What do you think?"

The question surprises him, though he does his best not to show it. "You are asking… my opinion?"

"Why wouldn't I? You've helped me earn this." She takes another sip of wine. "I think it's entirely reasonable to ask your opinion."

"The others have assisted you as well." _Ask them,_ he thinks. He does not want the… _responsibility_ of being asked his thoughts on such an important matter.

"Varric already believes there's treasure to be found in the Deep Roads. He _believes_ it. Who else should I ask? Isabela?"

"You might consider Aveline."

Hawke shakes her head, nose wrinkling. "Aveline plays it safe. She'll tell me not to throw fifty gold away on a gamble."

"How, then, am I different?" he asks, canting his head.

"You've taken more than your fair share of calculated risks and you're still alive to tell the tale."

This pulls a dry chuckle from his chest as he shakes his head at her. "You are an apostate who carries your stave into the Gallows, strapped upon your back like a challenge. How is that any less of a calculated risk?"

"You know what I _mean_," she replies, stretching one leg out to nudge him with her foot. "Besides, that's different. This is…" she looks again at the pouch. "This is my _whole family's future_ I'm playing with, Fenris. What if this turns out to be nothing? What if I'm throwing away fifty sovereigns on a pipe dream?"

Fenris leans forward in his chair, reaching out and plucking up the purse, finding it heavier than it looks. It is indeed a great deal of money; Fenris understands this, and he understands Hawke's fear of losing all she's worked so hard to earn. He understands her well enough to know she too has a propensity for _calculated risks_, but when her choices stand to affect her family—_her blood,_ she falls back on caution. Blood ties people together; blood can change a man's thoughts and alter his deeds. She does not want to fail those she is tied to. She does not want to fail her blood.

"Would _you_ take the job?" she asks, watching him as he lets the purse's weight shift in his hand.

"I would," he admits, after a too-long silence. "If Varric's expedition does not turn out how you wish, you will always have opportunity to earn more coin," he says, handing the pouch back to her. "However, if you abandon the prospect altogether, such an opportunity will likely never arise again."

"So what you're saying is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is the type you should probably take advantage of. Point taken."

#

"I hope you realize what an _opportunity_ this is, lad," Danarius says, holding out an empty wineglass.

A slave—and how strange it is Leto does not notice until _now_ that a slave has been present the whole while, standing silently against one wall—comes forward only now to pour wine into his master's glass before returning on silent feet to his place against the wall. Danarius takes a long sip, savoring the liquid as he settles into a high-backed chair, so plump with cushions it could be a throne. Another sip and he addresses the newcomer, still standing just outside Leto's line of sight.

There comes the slow, deliberate padding of bare feet against marble, drawing nearer and nearer. The footsteps of someone in no hurry. But Leto—with every second, his heart beats more wildly, blood pounding beneath his skin as perspiration courses more profusely from every pore, and every breath turns more ragged, more labored. He wants to be free of this table with its straps, he wants to be free of the thick roll of leather between his teeth, he wants to be free of this—it goes beyond _fear,_ it is terror and he knows it's radiating off him in thick waves, like sweat.

It is a man that appears at his side, bald, wearing only loose linen pants. Every inch of visible skin is etched with blood-writing, intricate designs like nothing he has ever seen—leafy vines, animal faces, writing Leto cannot read—covering the man's torso, running across his shoulders and down his arms then around each finger before twining back up again. Markings stretch up his neck, covering his face and scalp. A fish swims beneath his ear, a snake winds around his neck, a tiger roars upon his shoulder, all vibrant and colorful and looking all too _real_.

The man places two fingers beneath Leto's chin and with pale, pale grey eyes, looks down at him from head to foot with a cold, assessing gaze. He narrows those eyes, so like ice, and snaps the thin leather strap from around Leto's neck. Mamae's gift, gone, and it takes every ounce of self-will Leto possesses not to give voice to his protests. With slow, languorous movements, Danarius rises from his chair and crosses the room, and the man drops the talisman into the magister's waiting hand.

"Interesting," is all Danarius says, amusement dancing all through his tone as the piece of worked metal disappears into his robes. He nods once, and the silent slave waiting at the far end of the room pushes away with the barest whisper of sound and moves out of Leto's sight as Danarius returns to his chair. Ten thousand heartbeats later, the slave arrives by the marked man's side, pushing a wheeled cart.

A low, strangled noise forces its way out of Leto's throat as the long bone-handled instruments, tipped with so very many needles—too many to count, all in a row—flash maliciously in the lamplight. The slave, his face reflecting a practiced sort of blankness, uncorks a bottle of shimmering liquid and pours it into a shallow bowl, then backs away, retreating to his place against the wall.

The tone Danarius takes is coldly satisfied, the tone of a man who knows he will never be disobeyed.

All he says is, "Freehand. As we discussed."

The bone handles, too, are as intricately designed as the man. The blood-writer, for that is what he must be, takes one such instrument in hand, long, marked fingers gripping the bone and dipping it into the bowl of shimmering, dancing liquid. The needles are so close together that the liquid—lyrium, he guesses, though he has never had cause or opportunity to see it so close before—clings like paint to a bristled brush.

The man's hand does not so much as tremble as he presses the line of needles into the skin just below Leto's bottom lip.

It _burns._

#

Blood courses through his fingers, hot and thick. The blade had been poisoned—deathroot toxin, Hawke mutters with a swear—and the wound burns as more and more of his skin around the gut wound is eaten away.

"Easy, Fenris." She cradles his head in one hand, her thumb stroking slowly against one temple. "Easy now." Blue-white healing magic flares around her free hand as she nudges his hand out of the way, pressing her own to the wound. "Hold still—Maker, I said hold _still."_

"I _am,_" he grinds out through clenched teeth. But he draws in a breath and wills himself to settle, concentrating on the thumb against his temple. Fenris doubts Hawke is even aware she's doing it, but the slow back and forth motion against his skin is something to hold onto, to focus on. He slows his breathing to match her rhythm. The glow around her hand grows brighter.

"There we go," she whispers, taking in a breath and pulling at even more of her mana. "I doubt this is going to feel anything even _close_ to good."

Hawke's healing magic freezes and burns at turns, a strange hotcold pulse that sinks into him like fire melting ice before freezing over once again. She takes in another breath and thin tendrils of light stretch out, bobbing gently in midair before sinking into his abdomen, like searing fingers of frost.

Her thumb is still at his temple. Still dragging back and forth across his skin. All the power she's funneling through the hand against his wound hasn't left the hand against his head unaffected. Her fingers tingle faintly, even the thumb that's become the center of his attention, and the sensation travels down his spine, a gentle counterpoint to the maelstrom of healing going on at his gut. Beneath the ice-cold burn, muscle and organs and skin are all coming back together, becoming whole again.

Then, all at once, Hawke exhales and the bright blue-white light surges and fades away, and she is left kneeling upon a filthy Darktown street, supporting his head while her other hand still presses against the site where his wound had been. Her hands are warm, and now, he sees, coated with blood. His blood. When Fenris drags his eyes from Hawke's hand up to her face, he's startled to find her eyes bright with tears. She blinks once, sending two droplets splashing down to his breastplate, but before he can draw breath to comment, Hawke shifts her expression—the same way, he imagines, she shifts her mana—into a something not-quite a glare, because she cannot conceal her relief from him, not at this distance.

"Next time, _parry_," she says, her tone far sharper than the look in her eyes. He sits up under his own power and she turns away to check on the other members of their party.

Fenris looks down to find the two droplets have slid together into one, and even after he's flicked away the moisture, he finds he cannot dismiss the fear and worry in Hawke's eyes quite so easily.

#

The storm rages above, rain pelting down on the windowed ceiling, every burst of lightning revealing rivulets of water sliding across the domed glass, like the tears Leto stubbornly refuses to shed, like the sweat beading up and trickling across his skin.

He has lost track of the hours he's been strapped here, forced to stillness while the mute, marked man works until he too drips with sweat, until his cramping fingers tremble. But still he works. Still he carves marks into Leto's skin. Needles, over and over again, needles into his skin, lancing, pushing, pushing, _pushing_ down into his flesh, scraping—he is sure—against his bones, through him, further and further, until the pricking-sharp points come out the other side.

Needles. Needles into his skin. Needles and lyrium. Lyrium and needles.

Mamae. He turns his mind to Mamae and Varania and their _freedom_, and for moments at a time, those memories blot out the sharpest edges of pain.

Every inch of skin the man marks burns long after the needles have done their work, a searing pain that spreads beneath his skin, not just in the etched lines but _everywhere_—into his blood, into his bones, his brain, his eyes, mouth, stomach, every inch of him_._ Needles pierce his skin, sending lyrium deep below the surface, over and over and _over_ again, as the man carves twining lines into his flesh that stretch down his neck, his chest, his arms until Leto burns with lyrium, until every breath past his cracked lips scorches his dry throat, his lungs.

He bleeds; his knows this to be true. The needles push too deeply for him _not_ to bleed, and sometimes, when thunder crashes and jagged strings of lightning flash above, Leto wonders if it's blood slicked across his skin and not sweat. Hot, coppery blood, beading up through his burning skin and dripping down, down into the drain, parts of him lost forever in the darkness, leaving nothing but the burn of lyrium beneath his skin.

"He's taking the pain well," Hadriana murmurs to Danarius, a wineglass dangling from her fingers as she tucks her legs up beneath her robes and shifts indolently on the divan. Leto's skin burns and the leather between his teeth and parting his lips has left his mouth is so achingly dry no amount of swallowing will suffice. The liquid in Hadriana's glass glitters in the lamplight, mocking him, though he knows the wine would sting his lips and burn his throat. Still, he craves it.

"Pain?" Danarius echoes with a soft chuckle as the slave and the blood-writer work silently together to unbuckle and pull loose the leather straps anchoring Leto. His relief, however, is short-lived; he is free only long enough for them to turn him over on the table before strapping him into place again. The wood is damp with either sweat or blood, and Leto stares down between the heavy planks, down to the drain beneath the table; it is open and silent, a gaping mouth that drinks up his sweat and his blood at turns. As the needles press down into his neck, he stares at the dark hole, its grating like teeth, wishing it would swallow _him_ up and consume him entirely, from the burning beneath his skin, to the salty, dripping sweat, to the blood he knows he's shedding.

"Whatever he's feeling now, it is but a trifle. The pain hasn't even started yet."

#

Though he does not want to, though it is a tale the memory of which still twinges sharply with the ache of a long-festering wound, Fenris tells Hawke about the Fog Warriors.

The rebels who'd protected him, men and women slaughtered because Danarius had ordered it, because Fenris had believed too deeply in his own despair, his _resignation_ he would be forever tied to Danarius, forever his slave, forever _his._ At the time, the matter had seemed hopeless. And at the time, that hopelessness had masqueraded as clarity. Reality. His master had come for him, and Fenris' dream had ended. It ended in blood of the only friends he'd ever known slicking his clawed, steel fingers, coursing hot down his arms, down his armor, soaking the earth.

Perhaps it is the warmth of wine in his belly that tells him it's a good idea. Perhaps it is his propensity for his own destruction. Perhaps it is because he knows she will listen—and she does. She listens as he tells her of his betrayal. Of the escape he never knew he wanted. Hawke listens but does not judge, and he marvels for a moment how he misjudged her for so long.

He has misjudged a _mage._ It hardly seems possible. A mage he has drunk with, talked with, and fought alongside for three years now. They fight back to back, both of them knowing the other's moves as well as they know their own. Hawke knows when his strength is flagging, knows when his injuries need healing. He has lost games of Wicked Grace to her, and she has been the one sitting next to him on nights he pulled his winnings in close. She has invited him into her home, and he has invited her into his.

Of course he tells her about his escape. There is no one else he _would_ tell.

She does not judge. She merely listens; long into the night, she listens, and they talk, until the Agreggio is gone and they move on to the other bottles of lesser wines in Danarius' cellar. As they drink, as Hawke's cheeks grow flushed with wine and firelight, Fenris vows he will not betray this friend as he once betrayed the rebels in Seheron. And when she tilts her head and sends him a smile he is sure has been fueled by the contents of now-empty bottles, when she hints—and if she believes it a subtle hint, the wine has impaired her more than Fenris suspected—at possibilities extending _beyond_ friendship, his first thought is to blame the wine.

His second is to imagine Hawke's hands—hands so often aglow with healing light, with fire, with lightning—_her_ hands upon him. His eyes fall to her mouth, to lush, full lips so ready to tilt into a smile—a mouth, he is sure, that tastes of wine. He has come to trust those hands, that mouth—he trusts they will not visit cruelties upon him.

He _trusts_.

He trusts, despite having come to expect pain, to anticipate it at every turn.

#

His skin feels as if it is aflame. He is beginning to believe it may never stop.

Leto cannot remember a time when his skin didn't sing with pain. The rain has stopped, but everything beyond the windows, so far as he can snatch glimpses from the corner of his eye, is dark. The darkness is so complete, so thick and thorough and impermeable, not even the flickering lamplight can burn it away—it _encroaches,_ cold and black and hungry, and that darkness will swallow him, swallow him like the hole beneath the table has drunk up his sweat and his blood and the spittle that drips in pathetic strings past his dry, cracked lips.

The pristine marble around the drain is spattered with red, the veins of red working through the stone mingling with his blood, droplets slowly stretching and lengthening as his blood rolls toward the hungry drain.

The man's needles have carved paths down his spine, along his arms and hands, down his buttocks, his legs, his feet. He is marked and bloody and the lyrium still burns—he doubt it will ever _stop_ burning—beneath the surface, a sting that he is certain could hollow him out if only he lets it.

_Mamae,_ he tells himself._ Think of Mamae. _

The sting will hollow him out. He wants to let it.

Danarius' voice sounds far away, as if it's bouncing off the walls, off the floor, off the windowed ceiling, growing more and more distant with every word. "Finished, are you?" A beat of silence passes and there comes the muted shush of fabric, the gentle tap of booted feet against marble as Danarius comes to inspect the man's work. Leto _feels_ his new master drawing closer and closer, his own breath speeding up in response—partially spawned from fear and partially from hope, for Leto _hopes_ this is the end of it. He had not expected to suffer for such a prize, but every inch of flesh is screaming and now he only wants it to be over. He will be Danarius' bodyguard, he will do _anything the magister wants,_ if only the lyrium-burn in his skin will _stop_.

He thinks of his mother, screws his eyes shut tight and pictures her face. He pictures her smiling. _Mamae._

"Oh, that's _very_ nice," says Danarius, reaching the side of the table. Leto stares at the floor. Dark splotches drop silently below him. "Every bit as good as I was led to believe. Most excellent."

The slave moves from his station again, crossing the room and pushing the wheeled cart away. From the corner of his eye, Leto watches the blood-writer bow deeply to Danarius before leaving the room without a backwards look. The door closes behind him, and there is a cold finality in the way the latch catches, sharp and loud in this cavernous room.

"He's finished," Danarius whispers in Leto's ear, hot breath redolent of wine and uncomfortably cold against sweat-damp skin. "But you, however, you are not." With effort, Leto lifts his head to look at his new master. Danarius only breathes a soft laugh at the display and Leto finds it nearly impossible to fight a shudder at the sound.

"My apprentice is impressed with your… _fortitude_," he says, sparing a glance at Hadriana. "But I find myself as yet… unconvinced. It is time to prove whether you are truly a wolf, or nothing more than a pup."

_Mamae._

#

She believed he would spare her.

She believed him.

She took him at his word.

He'd _given_ her his word.

Fenris walks, heedless of the rocky terrain, of the roar of crashing waves. His strides are long and quick, but relentless, as if there is the slightest chance he might burn off his anger through movement alone. It doesn't work; he is more than halfway back to the city before his pace begins to slow, but he is no less furious, no less _frustrated_ than before.

He hadn't intended to go back on his word. He _hadn't._ He…no, it wasn't that he thought himself above such petty betrayals. The truth is deeper than that, more complex than that. He… _wanted_ to be a better man than the sort who would—

He'd _wanted_ to—

_He'd wanted to crush that bitch's heart. He'd wanted to see fear in her eyes and feel hot blood pulsing through his fingers as life slid from those eyes, from that laughing, mocking face and vanished forever. He'd wanted to revisit on her just a _fraction_ of the torment she'd forced him to suffer through, over and over and over again._

A half-formed curse, barely articulate, tears its way from his throat. _Hawke would have kept her word. _He knows she would have; she'd have kept her word because that was what Hawke _did_. And Fenris wants to be the sort of man who keeps his word. Promises are things too easily broken; they are forged by words and bound by honor, and Fenris considers himself—no. No, that isn't right either. It isn't that Fenris considers himself an honorable man. It's that Hawke considers him honorable, and he wants—it's true and he knows it: he wants to be the honorable sort of man she thinks he is.

Slowly, as if catching up with him, now that his steps have slowed, now that the Wounded Coast is far behind him and Kirkwall's gates loom before him, his parting words to Hawke slither through the back of his mind.

_What does magic touch that it doesn't spoil?_

What indeed? He'd meant it at the time, meant it down to the very pit of his soul. It was magic that had done _this_ to him, wasn't it? Whatever—whoever—he'd been before, it hadn't been _this._ A weapon. A wolf. A half-mad monster that would destroy everything in its path without compunction, because that is what it was _created to do._

The memory of Hawke's face surfaces in his mind, the moment after he spat those words at her feet.

How many wounds of his has she healed? How many battles has he survived thanks to her? Whether he likes it or not, Hawke's magic has touched _him_ these three years. And it—her touch, her _magic_—has not spoiled him. It has helped him realize he aspires to be more than a weapon, more than a wolf, more than a monster.

Fenris will have to apologize to her, he thinks, as he climbs the stairs to the Hightown market, merchants closing down shop as the sun dips further behind the horizon, casting everything in bronze and shadow. He knows his bloodstained appearance garners looks from the merchants—both wary and suspicious—but Fenris cannot find the wherewithal to care overmuch. He isn't quite sure what he's going to say to Hawke, but an apology is definitely in order.

With luck, she will accept it. With luck, she will not decide she is weary of his vitriol and cast him out from her company. With luck, she will take his word for it his apology is genuine.

Fenris is only halfway up the stairs leading away from the market when he hears Hawke, calling his name. Breath freezing in his lungs, Fenris backs into the lengthening early-evening shadows, angling himself between two buildings, barely breathing as she hurries by. She is alone, which surprises and annoys him—did she send Isabela and Varric off to search for him somewhere else? And why is she alone at all? They have spoken on the necessity of posting a guard by her home. Did she not think he was in earnest? There are few in Kirkwall with as many enemies as Hawke, and if anyone _shouldn't_ be searching the streets alone so close to nightfall, it is she.

It takes barely a second for Fenris to slip out of the shadows, following Hawke at a distance as she looks for him—and it is most definitely him she's searching for. It occurs to him perhaps she too is angry. Angry he broke a promise, angry at the words he spoke to her, angry _at him._ But the tear, the _urgency_ in her voice resembles concern more than anger, and when he catches sight of her in profile, he knows it isn't anger Hawke is harboring.

This, somehow, manages to make him feel _worse _and after following her past a few more of his own hiding spots, Fenris decides he will wait for Hawke at her home. He will craft his apology and deliver it sooner rather than later.

And if she casts him out, he will bear it.

#

He cannot bear it. Cannot bear the silence, the waiting, the pounding of blood in his ears. There is something coming—he knows it, _he knows_ and it is worse, it is far, far worse than what he's undergone so far. There is something _worse_ than this burn beneath his skin, something worse than needles, something worse than waiting, waiting, _waiting_ as markings are carved with excruciating precision into his skin. It builds all around him, growing and pressing and _squeezing_ him, and at first Leto thinks—_hopes_—it is all in his mind, that this is simply fear and nothing more than fear, but he realizes too late that the shallow wounds covering his body are _bleeding._ This is not a slow, irregular trickle—the blood is being _pulled_ from him even as _magic_—and he knows it is magic, knows the icy press upon his heart can be nothing _but_ magic, and not Varania's harmless tricks of frost and ice, but true, dark, _powerful_ magic.

The coils around his heart tighten and grow hot, _hotter,_ until the lyrium-burn in his blood catches to his skin like a fuse, like a candle's new wick, sparking in uncertainty only seconds before the flame consumes it in light and heat. His teeth sink into the roll of leather as his scream—and there is a tiny voice, soft like a mouse's claws scraping the inside of his skull, that whispers to him _this is only the first of many_—rips past his throat.

Danarius voice next to his ear, his voice low and _amused._ "Do you think me a fool, lad?" he asks. Leto looks up in confusion, no easy feat strapped face-down as he is. His master is holding the metal symbol of Elgar'nan between his fingers, the broken leather strap dangling forlornly past his wrist. Danarius grips Leto's chin, fingers squeezing as he tilts his head back and back, until a broken cry tears from Leto's throat. "Or do I know more of your gods than you do?"

Leto's eyes go to the symbol, now flashing with reflected light and magic. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries—_tries_ to think of his mother and sister.

Danarius' words come out a whisper, but sting like a slap. _"Look at me."_

Leto forces his eyes open, forces himself to look at his new master.

"Elgan'nan, the god of vengeance," purrs Danarius, and there has never been a more horrible smile than the one gracing the magister's lips.

_"The first of the elven gods," Mamae tells him as she presses a kiss to the crown of his head, "born of the sun and the earth." _

"Are you vengeful, Leto?"

He shakes his head, eyes streaming from both fear and pain—it _burns_ and _pulls_ straight down to his bones and there is light, so much horrible _light_ and he just wants—

_He is hungry and cold, but Mamae's voice slows his tears. "Elgar'nan pulled the jealous sun from the sky and all was dark and cold. Do you know who bade him put it back again, my dear one?"_

"Your false gods do not tread in the Imperium," he whispers, and it doesn't seem right Danarius' whisper should drown out his own screams, but it does, and for a horrible, terrifying moment, Leto fears the magister is _in his head. _"They do not dare."

_"Mythal," he answers, for he loves this the most of all Mamae's stories._

_His mother's smile is answer enough. "She laid calming fingers upon his brow, and the anger that had seemed like to consume him fled like darkness with the dawn. And he saw what his anger had wrought, and in that moment knew it had led him astray."_

"You are not vengeance. You are cunning. You are a _wolf,_" he hisses, flecks of spittle hitting Leto's face. "You are _my_ wolf, and you will do _my_ bidding."

A smile stretches his mouth, showing too many teeth, too much ice in those blue eyes.

"And you will never forget it. Or remember anything else."

The world before his eyes flashes like lyrium burning.

#

His markings flash, bathing Hawke's face in light.

Her mouth is warm, her lips pliant, and the feel of her, the taste of her, the smell of her fills his senses—he has been thinking of her, of nothing else, it's true, and now, as her mouth works against his, as her hands glide from his back to his neck to his shoulders, he shudders because the reality of Hawke in his arms blots out mere _thought._

They stumble up the stairs and she stops midway to kiss him—and such a kiss, all hunger and lust—and when he pulls at the sash around her waist, she grazes his lip with her teeth and chuckles against his mouth, "Against the bannister, then?" She winks and though he knows she is not serious, they will not succumb to their combined passion _on the stairs_, emotion clutches at him, for _this_ is Hawke too, and it means as much to him as her caresses.

The voice of his better sense speaks up too softly to be heard: _too fast, too fast, too fast!_

But it is drowned out by his pounding heart, his ragged breaths, his _want_—he had not thought it possible, but he _does_ want her. _Has_ wanted her.

They collide against her chamber door, which flings open under the assault, slamming closed again when they land hard against it, hands groping at clothes and armor, mouths searching, gasping, groaning.

They leave a trail to the bed and sink into the goose down and silk, losing themselves to experimental touches and curious caresses, whispered questions—

"How does this feel?"

—and moaned entreaties—

"There, please, _there!_"

And when there is nothing but the two of them, sated and panting and drowsy enough to curl into each other and sleep, when there is nothing but Hawke's skin and bedsheets against him, when his breathing slows and he hovers upon the moment just before sleep overtakes him, Fenris _remembers._

#

He wakes to pain. Searing heat and light and something squeezing, squeezing the breath, the blood, the _will_ from him. Pain unlike anything he's ever known.

No. That's not right.

Pain unlike anything he's ever—

He has known nothing else.

Despite the burning, despite the clutching, crushing weight that presses and pulls at him, he tries. He pushes back against the searing heat, the exquisite white-hot agony to remember something else, anything else.

Where he is, _who_ he is, _why_ he is here.

_Why?_

He cannot remember anything beyond pain, for his lips are cracked and dry, his jaw aching as a thick roll of leather is pulled from between his teeth. His throat is raw with screaming and his eyes burn with sweat and tears. For a wild moment he wonders if this, whatever_ this_ is, has lasted so long it has eclipsed all else, and this is all there is left for him to remember.

Then there is nothing. Heat becomes cold, light vanishes into shadow, and the screams that had filled his ears seconds before turn to labored, rasping breaths. His lungs burn with them.

Movement around him. He is not alone.

He isn't sure whether this is a good thing or a very bad one.

He doesn't realize he'd been restrained at all until cool hands pull back the thick straps securing him.

"Get up."

It never occurs to him to question as he moves stiffly, pushing himself up, unsure of his own limbs. His skin, so hot before—so hot he'd been certain burns covered his body—is strangely cool now. Cool and unmarred, but for the pristine white lines crawling up his fingers to his arms and down his body. He takes a moment to look at his hands before he remembers he's been given a command. Tearing his eyes away, he pushes off the table, landing easily on his feet.

A man and woman (_human,_ something in his skull whispers) stand before him, richly attired. There is power in them—in their bearing, which he can see, and in their blood, which he can sense. He isn't sure what it is, that strange prickle along his skin, but there is power in the two of them.

One does not question power.

The man gives him a shrewd, appraising look, instructing him to turn around, which he does. It occurs to him he is unclothed, but he cannot quite link this to any cause for true alarm. He is cold. He wishes to be less so.

When he is facing them again, the man steps forward. "I am Danarius. You will call me _master._"

"Yes, master," he answers.

His throat is so raw. As if he's been screaming for years.

"You, my little wolf, are called Fenris."

"Fenris," he repeats, tasting the name on his tongue. He feels no recognition, and wonders for a moment if he ought to have done. "Yes, master."

"You are my bodyguard, Fenris, and you will protect me at any cost."

"Yes, master."

He tries to find truth in his master's words, tries to find _something_, some shred of protectiveness. But there is nothing. Nothing but his cooling skin and aching throat.

#

In three years, his shame still burns.

Fenris remembers too well the touch of Hawke's hand, her mouth against his, the sensation of barely contained power spilling from her fingertips as she moved below him, then above him. The clutch of her body as she clung to him, crying out as she came.

He can no longer recall any of what he remembered. All he can remember of that night is Hawke.

Though he tries to avoid her, she does not let him. She pulls him along on errands as often as she ever did before. She still wins at Wicked Grace, grinning at him as she empties her winnings into her purse. She still speaks to him. Still drinks with him. If she notices the favor he wears wrapped about his wrist, the Amell crest at his belt, she does not comment on it, and Fenris finds himself relieved.

She never asks _why_. She never asks, but the question and its answer scrape away at his insides. With every card game, every shared bottle of wine, every time she presses healing hands to his battle-wounds.

He will tell her. Soon. The length of red wound about his wrist both condemns and encourages him every day, and every day he has less reason _not_ to speak with her.

Whether she will listen or not, whether it will matter or not, he will tell her.

After all this, he owes her that much.

#

Danarius hands over the pouch of coins. "I believe there is the matter of a fee still owed you."

Despite the heat of the day, despite the noisy marketplace, this shop is cool and quiet, empty but for a single man and the art upon the walls. Fenris blinks in the dimness, such a sharp change from the blazing bright sun high above; outside the air is wavy with heat and thick with sweat. There is something about the smell of the place he dislikes, though he cannot put his finger on why, exactly. It is familiar and yet not, plucking a string of hatred deep within him.

He dislikes the smell almost as much as he dislikes the way the man is staring at him. Approval is reflected in his face. Pride. The man is marked, not unlike Fenris is, though there is significant difference between them. One is a canvas of color, of animals flashing fangs and claws, while the other is a study in white.

The man, Danarius has already explained, is mute, his tongue having been cut out by the one to whom he'd been apprenticed, whose tongue had been cut out by his master before him, and so on. His face, though, is expressive and easily read.

His master smiles, inclining his head in Fenris' direction. "I also thought you might enjoy seeing the finished product."

Fenris' hears prick up at the words, but he keeps his face impassive.

"I'm sure you'll agree he's quite a masterpiece," Danarius says, stepping aside as the blood-writer circles Fenris, smiling with pride—so much _pride_—at every inch of marked skin.

"Your greatest work to date."

The man gives an emphatic nod, beaming now.

"You know," his master goes on, casually, "I have heard it said the swan sings its most beautiful song—so beautiful that nothing can hope to compare to it—just before dying."

Pride and happiness fade to puzzlement. Wariness.

Mute, but not dumb.

"Look at it this way," Danarius says, stepping aside with a smile. "This is the work you'll be remembered for." The smile remains fixed in place as Danarius turns his eyes on Fenris. "Kill him."

Fenris still doesn't understand _how_ he does what he can do, only that he is able to do it. He breathes in, feels the intangible, indescribable _something_ (_lyrium,_ his mind whispers, _it's lyrium_) in his blood shift and stretch as his markings go suddenly bright with light that stings with the memory of burning.

He's never taken a life before. Or if he has, he does not recall it.

It's easier than he expects. Or maybe the burning in his blood—memory of burning—has consumed his uncertainty in its flames.

His hand passes into the blood-writer, just as he knows it will.

Wariness fades to fear.

The man's heart beats a frantic tattoo against Fenris' fingertips. It is a hot, slick thing, pumping blood through his fingers, faster and faster.

"Kill him," Danarius says again.

Fenris nods once, then grasps the man's heart with phantom fingers at the very moment he phases his arm solid again. It takes little effort—the organ just… gives way, as if fear has made it burst of its own accord. He pulls his arm free with a sick, wet sound. His hand up to his forearm glisten with the very blood that had pulsed from the man's heart, the pulpy remains of which are dripping even now from his clawed gauntlets.

"Well done, Fenris." Danarius plucks up the pouch of coins he'd given the blood writer. "Very well done."

"Thank you, master."

#

_You are no longer my master._

The words echo in his ears long after Danarius is dead. His sister—his sister lives, but she is a thought to be saved for another day. Danarius is dead, and that event is too significant, too overwhelming; Fenris finds he cannot spare much thought on much else right now.

_You are no longer my master._

In the end, the magister's heart had proven just as vulnerable, just as soft, just as _yielding_ as others he'd wrapped his fingers around over the years. Like so many others, Danarius' heart had sped, twitching and pulsing against his palm in fear, in desperation during those scant seconds before his death. In the end, those hard, cold blue eyes had widened in terror. In the end, Danarius had known his death was imminent, that there would be no rescue, no reprieve.

In the end, Danarius had been nothing more than a man. And men, as Fenris well knows, can be killed. Easily. Too easily. His blood had spilled like any other man's.

Years of pain, of torment, years of cruelty, of humiliation—years that still weigh upon Fenris, filling his memory, still and possibly forever blotting out whoever he'd been _before._ Leto. Whoever that boy had been.

Killing Danarius had been quick. The brief tightening of clawed fingers around a furiously-beating heart before the organ exploded like overripe fruit. It had been _too_ quick. Too quick to make up for the years Fenris had spent running, for the life Leto had sacrificed to these markings and their promise of power. Too quick to prove proper retribution for the Fog Warriors Fenris had slaughtered under Danarius' order. The man had been alive, and then he was dead. Nothing else had changed. The world was the same as it had ever been, save being short a single magister and Fenris left with no one upon whom to focus his hate.

_You are no longer my master._

He is a free man, true. Danarius is dead. He has the very things he has wanted for as long as he can remember wanting them. He suspects he should feel satisfaction.

He suspects he should feel something. Something beyond Danarius' blood, dry and sticky on his hands.

#

_"Venhedis,"_ he hisses, shaking out his hand and glaring at the book in his lap. At Hawke's inquisitive look, Fenris holds up his index finger to reveal a bright droplet of blood beading up from a paper cut. It glistens in the firelight.

Hawke, though, just chuckles, shaking her head. "It was bound to happen, I think. This has been the only battle you've fought that hasn't left its mark upon you." Her grin tilts into something endearingly crooked and she adds, "Mark of honor though it most certainly is." Then, as she leans across the couch to kiss him, there is a flash of silver-blue. The paper cut is healed.

He glares, but without heat. "I can think of better uses for your mana."

"And I think I've managed to keep the library more or less bloodstain-free. It's a record I'm rather proud of."

It is a companionable silence they settle back into, Hawke curled longways on the couch, her bare feet gradually—and by inches—creeping into his lap. He's not sure what it is she's reading, but whatever the topic it's making her eyes droop and her head nod forward, though she struggles against it. His own tome is… engaging, to be sure—"epic" poetry, Hawke had called it, enticing him with promises of wars and monsters and evil mages overthrown—but he finds himself… too easily distracted. Perhaps the poetic battles resting in his lap are too… close, bear too much resemblance to the past few days.

The past _ten years_.

He closes the book quietly, tipping his head back and watching the flames jump and dance in the hearth.

"You're thinking," comes Hawke's soft murmur from beside him.

"I am."

A beat of silence. "It looks as though you're on the cusp of _brooding._"

"I do _not_—"

Hawke cuts him off with a soft laugh, her toes nudging his thigh. "Gotcha."

Then her feet are gone, tucked up under Hawke's body as she twists around on the sofa, leaning against him now. The not-inconsiderable number of cushions and pillows shift and judder with her relocation, and an orange tasseled affair tumbles to the floor entirely. Soon she is leaning heavily against him, her legs pulled up, arms wrapped around them.

"You _are_ thinking, though."

He nods his agreement, exhaling hard. "Possibly on the cusp of brooding." Hawke breathes a soft laugh, resting her head against his shoulder. "It is done," he says, sending her a sidelong glance. "It is _done_ and yet…"

Her hair tickles his cheek. "And yet?" she prompts quietly.

"And yet it… feels as if… as if…" As Fenris struggles to find the words, Hawke remains still and silent next to him. Finally, the words come, though they are clumsy. "At times it feels as if the world has changed. And at times I feel as if there has been no change at all." At her curious look he turns his eyes down to the book in his hands. "Forgive me. We… have had this discussion once already."

"Maker forfend we discuss it again," she drawls wryly. "I mean, you only just killed the magister who's had a dead-or-alive bounty on your head for the better part of a decade, freeing yourself from him—quite conclusively, might I add."

He sighs, flipping the pages with one hand. He isn't sure what Hawke sees in his expression, what she reads in his body language, but soon her hand is over his, stilling it and stopping the muted rustle of the pages.

"It all seems so easy when you talk it out, doesn't it?" she asks, tilting her head to look at him. "Starting anew. Meeting our future—whatever it may be and however long it might last—together, side by side. It's so easy to _talk_ about it."

He nods. "I confess I… still don't know where or how to begin."

"And that's the hardest part of all," Hawke says, smiling now, the warmth of it crinkling the corners of her eyes. "You're fretting about _how_ to begin without realizing we've already begun."

He blinks once. Twice. But it… makes sense, he supposes.

"The future's ten minutes from now, Fenris. It's tomorrow. It's two weeks from yesterday. It's a month. We don't get our future all at once with a flourish—we get it piecemeal, because that's the only way we can enjoy it." She sees something in his face that makes her smile widen slightly. "Which is absolutely _not_ what you had in mind when you said you'd walk into it gladly by my side, hmm?"

"If _this_ is our future, Hawke," he says, waving a hand at the warmth of the library around him—and he _realizes_. He realizes it so suddenly and so sharply that the breath goes still in his lungs.

"Yes?" she prompts.

This _is_ their future. Every second that ticks by leads to another second, and another, and another—and that _time_, the luxury of it—was not something Fenris ever expected to have at his disposal. It is time he doesn't have to spend running. It is time he can spend how he wishes. It is not a single sweeping change, but countless minuscule ones, too tiny to notice. Danarius' death did not _create_ the change; it _allowed_ changes to be made.

"If this is our future," he says again, "there is no one I would rather have by my side."


End file.
